Not much of a Link Log but I did find some pictures...
Books
Going into the final month before publication of a book I was sent for preview...I encourage all readers to pre-order Lerone Martin's book, Young King, now; it should be in the stores by the fifth of May. I don't think activism should be anyone's profession. I think it is something everyone needs to do in an occasional, part-time way. Meaning everyone can profitably study the life and work of the great activists of the twentieth century, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Martin Luther King (Jr).
Fashion
It passed for headline news these days that the person photographed on the left spoke of Michelle Obama as someone she admired, "and then there are" people like the person photographed on the right.
So?
There are things to admire about Mrs. Obama though she, like Melania Trump, is famous mostly for being married to someone famous. There are things to admire about Meryl Streep, including her having the fortitude to appear in movies now that she's aged into the face on the left, below.
But in the context of a conversation about fashion and beauty, which is the topic of Streep's forthcoming film...Can we just learn to say it, ladies? "I admire Mrs. Obama because she's coped so well with being in a position where she has to look glamorous even after having spent forty years being told that if a Black American woman is glamorous, after age forty, nobody wants to think about it..."
(Lena Horne. All photos in this section from Google. Lena Horne probably deserves some special kudos for admitting she was legally Black, but she was and she did, and also she could sing.)
"...whereas, although Lena Horne was certainly enough of a source of distress in this way, WHEN MELANIA TRUMP HAS BEEN DEAD THREE DAYS SHE'LL LOOK BETTER THAN I EVER DID! IT'S NOT FAAAIR! Boohoohoo!"
Then perhaps we can start to pull ourselves together. If nature had intended us to look like Melania we would have been given the potential to come a little closer to that effect, don't you think?
There are women we admire for other qualities more than their looks. Not that Queen Elizabeth wasn't pretty...
Not that there's ever been anything wrong with Dolly Parton's face...
...or Emmylou Harris's...
...or Golda Meir's...
...or Ruby Dee's...
...or Dale Evans Rogers'...
...or Anna Zilboorg's, for that matter. (To the extent that she's famous it's probably for the knitting and dyeing she's done in "retirement." Before that she worked in humanitarian missions. In my town she's probably best known for, while living as an Anglican Christian hermit, telling some brats who said she looked like a witch "I AM a witch"...just to see their faces react. But she looks like a fine-looking witch! Hollywood's very best!)
Just that their faces weren't their greatest assets. Which was also what used to be said about Meryl Streep. It wasn't that she dazzled movie watchers with her beauty, although she was young and cute when she became famous. It was that she was pretty enough to play pretty girls but also talented enough to play women who were older and less pretty, in her movies. Any starlet with a blonde wig could have played the blonde romance writer in She-Devil--it wasn't much of a part. Streep could also play the bereaved mother who hid her face from reporters because she thought she was ugly, in A Cry in the Dark. The real woman on whom the storyline was based wasn't ugly, nor was Streep, but Streep could credibly act as if she'd been told she was ugly and believed it.
Maybe she does. Maybe that's why she's acting a little bit ugly about a woman who is prettier.
But in the context of fashion, can't we just agree that Melania is the supermodel to end all supermodels?Jealous envy is not a flattering look for anybody. Beauty is just not enough to tempt a reasonable woman into the Deadly Sin of Envy...any more.
Politics
On the premise that all rightminded bloggers already opposed the election of a political candidate who overtly disrespected a blogger qua blogger, this web site has retired from opposing Candidate Spambucket, now Governor. The position of this web site is that she was elected because lazy Republicans failed to vote against her, and those lazy Rs deserve what they get.
But a recent poll shows that 90% of them don't like it.
Vote NO to "redistricting," or gerrymandering, so the Rs in the Swamp can have congressional representation in 2030. They should have suffered enough to make the time to do that, by then.
The great philosopher/poet Willy Nelson once said 'there are two kinds of men: those who love Emmilou Harris, and those who have never heard of her.'
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